Before and After
by Cairnsy
Summary: When Sanji receives some bad news, Zoro is the only one there to help him deal with it.


I've kind of had this idea floating around in my head for a while, but I could never figure out how to get it down on paper without making it incredibly cliché. It's still most definitely that, but now it is at least written, I suppose. There are two parts to this, but the second part is unlikely to be out before next Wednesday due to Uni exams.

Summary: When Sanji receives some bad news, Zoro is the only one there to help him deal with it.

**Before**.

That fucking asshole.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Emotionally and physically spent after having just left another island jammed packed with people determined to kill them, the crew had decided to spend a little down time on a 'very, VERY safe, I promise!' isthmus that was known for nothing at all. Zoro hadn't cared, as long as there was beer to be had, and Sanji had been enough in the same mindset to tag along once he'd collected a month's worth of groceries. Being men – at least, Zoro was surely one, he had doubts about Sanji at times – and competitive one(s) at that, the mutual drinking time had turned into a mutual drinking competition. With beer in him and food on the table, Sanji was almost decent company, which should have been a huge, honking red flag that something was going to go wrong.

Naturally, it did. He'd only been in the bathroom for a slither of a moment, but when he'd returned Sanji had slunk off like the rotten snake he was, leaving Zoro to foot the bill. It could have been worse, Zoro supposed as he stomped back in the direction of the Going Merry, hoping the damnable cook was there so that he could wring his neck. They hadn't been there all that long, so the bill wasn't that high. But Sanji had still left it deliberately for him, and all because of some stupid letter that had been passed to him by a carrier bird. It was sure to be from one of the pretty girls Sanji had flirted so disgustingly with earlier, Zoro could still remember the squawking horror of a bird that had fluttered 'cutely' around her shoulders..

The anger melted into something else when he reached the ship, something closer to confusion and wariness. Sanji hadn't retreated anywhere safe, was in fact resting easily against the railing of the ship, glazed-over eyes quietly scanning the horizon. Zoro wasn't good at picking up the feel of a situation, preferring to find out through brute force what was going on. But there was something that hung painfully clear in the air that made even Zoro know that something was terribly, terribly wrong, and the feeling was radiating in waves from Sanji. Suddenly, Zoro was far more sober than he had any intention of being.

"You left me with the bill, you bastard." The words sounded unreasonably harsh to even Zoro's ears, but he was damned if he knew what else he was supposed to have said. His gaze drifted down to the piece of paper in Sanji's hand before resolutely ignoring it. None of his business. "And if you think you can get out paying me back just because you got some love note-"

Sanji thrust the letter at him.

And, it was funny. He'd never thought that Sanji might have a family somewhere, a real one that didn't involve a slightly mad ex-pirate and a deranged extended family who were stupidly allowed to play with knives as a living. Zoro had never asked, of course, but he would have had to have _thought_ first, so it was really a moot point.

"Your mother's dying." His words sounded cold, not because he didn't care in his own strange way, but because how else were you supposed to say such a thing, anyway?

"Yeah." Sanji barely moved, instead taking another drag from his cigarette and quietly watching the smoke blend into the salty air. "Yeah."

"Are you-"

"No point." The empty words did not seem any less so simply because Sanji smiled. "It must have taken weeks for the letter to reach me, and it would take just as long to get back … there." Sanji stumbled slightly on the last word, and Zoro wondered if it was because he had wanted to say 'home' or because he knew he should have. Another drag, another long, endless gaze that found itself drifting somewhere over the ocean before them. "The letter only said-"

Three or four weeks at most. Yeah.

"If you go, we'll wait." Sanji's emotionless gaze slid momentarily towards him, perhaps taken aback by his gruff tone, perhaps taken aback by the sentiment laced into them. Perhaps simply feeling nothing at all, because the gaze returned to the ocean and nothing else was forthcoming. "She wants to see you."

"No, no she doesn't." The sweeping bitterness was better than the numbness that had preceded it, but not by much. Zoro was about to remind the idiot that the letter had said exactly that, but Sanji never gave him the chance. "What were your parents like, Zoro?"

Fucking hell. Nami should have been here, or Robin. Even Luffy would probably be able to deal with this better than Zoro was with whatever this was turning into.

"They thought I was completely and utterly nuts." And they had, but they'd been good enough to try and supportive his craziness, anyway. "What was it like with that crazy cook?"

This time Sanji's small smile was genuine.

"Bloody awful. Cook, clean, grab a few hours sleep, get yelled at, do a bit of yelling in return." His smile became a tad nostalgic. "I can't remember ever getting more than a couple of hours sleep a night. There were always onions to peel and broths to prepare." The smile slipped as he finished speaking, and it was several long moments before he spoke again. "It's not me she wants to see, but my father." A screen of smoke momentarily blocked Sanji's features. "I … look like him. Almost."

"Almost?" The word ripped itself from Zoro before he'd even properly processed what Sanji had said, and the other man seemed darkly amused at the question.

"He had grey eyes." Not blue, like Sanji's. Probably not partly hidden away, like Sanji's. He wondered how long they'd been that way. "Supposedly. She never talked much about him. He wasn't there, and that was all that really mattered." Zoro didn't ask.

He wasn't entirely sure if Sanji had an answer.

"She always said it was the only thing of value about her stupid son." A sharp, painful smile, and Zoro hated him for going there, hated everything about this that fitted neither of them. Men didn't have these sorts of conversations, especially when they were men who were still occasionally boys. "A waste of space, a waste of energy. Fuck." The cigarette was thrown angrily overboard, another lit by hands that shook traitorously. The pain was there, then, clouding normally clear eyes and twisting features that had struggled to stay impressively passive for so long. "It was … it was easier to simply leave than to be _that_, to be everything she didn't-" He broke off "When I was old enough, I jumped on the first ship that didn't give a fuck that I was only a kid, beyond the fact it meant they'd only have to pay me shit-all. I haven't seen her in 12 years." Sanji was only 19. "I haven't thought about her for 12 years." Maybe not. Sanji … Sanji had never seemed like the kind of person who dwelled too long on things that belonged in the past, and while it may have appeared callous to most people that Sanji had moved on so easily, it always made a strange sort of sense to Zoro coming from Sanji. But while Sanji had moved on, _she_ was still in much of what Sanji felt and did, and even an idiot like Zoro could see that. He wondered if Sanji could.

As the cigarette burnt lower, the ashed tip tickling at the top of Sanji's fingers, Sanji look suddenly young, as though he was instead a child who was trying to prove how mature he was by doing 'mature' things such as smoking and smirking. Confusion slipped into his gaze, warring with the hurt there, momentarily winning over that hurt, before being completely consumed by it and morphing into something else.

"She never tried …" Sanji didn't continue, words failing him in a way that Zoro had never known. There was no need for him to finish, however, not when the rest was painted so brilliantly in those helpless, hopelessly _childish _eyes.

Zoro hated her, then. No-one did this to his to one of his nakama, and they especially did not do it to Sanji, roughly stripping away all the layers that made him annoying and cocky and so fucking arrogant. Leaving _this _in its place, something pitiful and hated and which Sanji surely loathed more than anything they'd ever encountered, was the worst possible betrayal.

Sanji cursed when his cigarette did then burn his fingers, dropping the remaining stalk of ash quickly to the deck and stomping on it. The familiar action had a drastic effect on the other man, who appeared to abruptly realize exactly what type of conversation he was having and with whom. A slightly sardonic smirk twisted at his lips as he leaned with deliberate casualness against the deck railing, his gaze suddenly penetrating.

"You could have told me to stop, moron." The insult wasn't quite as biting as it should have been, but Zoro appreciated the effort for normality. THIS he could do.

"Because that's been so effective in the past." Zoro punctuated his response with a snort. "The only time you shut up is when you're drowning in your own drool."

"It is hardly my fault if I am occasionally bedazzled be the beauty of others."

"Occasionally!" The disbelief was just a little over the top, but then, Zoro wasn't the kind of person who usually had to act out his feelings instead of simply living them. "I'm surprised that we don't find you in a pile of drool every time you look in the mirror."

"Are you saying I'm attractive, Zoro?" That damn smirk that Zoro wanted to wipe off his face, and wipe it off right now.

"I'm saying you're a fucking narcissist."

"Big word for someone with a pea-brain." Food was an even better topic to shift to, and the relief was distractingly clear in Sanji's gaze. "I really should start dinner, anyway. Everyone will be back fairly soon and …" Sanji drifted off. "… I left everything back at the bar." The realisation unsettled Sanji more than it should have, a slight edge of panic slipping into his voice even as he fought to keep its normal smoothness. "I should go see if they're still there, but then there won't be enough time for the soup -" a hastily lit cigarette, "- and I need to preheat the stove for at least-"

"Don't be a moron, I'll go get them." Sanji blinked a couple of times at that before nodding, his fingers relaxing just slightly the death grip they had on the cigarette. He needed to … recollect himself. Yeah. And that couldn't be done when they were both here, making it blindingly obvious just how unsettling all this was.

Zoro wasn't entirely sure exactly which of them 'he' was. He had a feeling that it was both of them. He waited until Sanji had escaped to the steps of the galley before he 'casually' called back out to him, not bothering to still his own steps as he moved down the boat ramp.

"If you're not here when I get back, what I said before still stands."

A pause.

"What makes you think I'll even try?"

Zoro didn't turn. He had a feeling that Sanji didn't, either. Some things were easy said to someone's back. Some things were easier to hear that way, as well.

"Because you don't know how not to." You stupid, idiotic moron. Zoro knew, he _knew _that it didn't matter what that woman had done, nor the fact that she was likely to be dead. Sanji chased damsels as though they were instead butterflies, and that would never change. With _her, _it was where it all began.

Zoro wouldn't have gone, not if it the request had been uttered as a last, dying wish, not even if it was meant as an attempt to reconcile as opposed to one more glimpse at a past that had been lost even before he had been born. But, Sanji …

Sanji, Zoro was starting to realize, had never been able to tell the difference between the butterflies in his closest and the skeletons that lived there.

There was no answer, and Zoro wasn't expecting one. He was less than an hour, the bags of groceries balanced unsteadily in his arms as he made his way back onto the ship.

Sanji was gone.


End file.
